RDC Designs its Largest Equinox Gym Yet in San Francisco

2021 Best of Year winner for Fitness

San Diego. Los Angeles. Now add San Francisco to the locations of exercise facilities that RDC, or Retail Design Collaborative, has completed for Equinox. The firm’s latest gym for the brand occupies three floors of a landmarked 1960s office tower and features clever custom-crafted elements. Take the wood screen that defines the concierge area on the first level of the 35,600-square-foot space. Made of CNC-milled white oak, the screen provides a dynamic layering of geometric patterns—a “playful dichotomy of privacy and openness,” RDC associate principal and senior design director Jonathan Lopez says. The ceiling fixture above it, a weave of curved bronze rods and handblown glass, visually leads members and visitors onward.

On two, a portal to the wellness suite—containing lockers, showers, sauna, and spa—is composed of vertical steel plates and glass panels that are micro-ribbed on one side and back-painted a metallic copper on the other. The composition captures light and movement, creating a kinetic visual effect. But calmness reigns in the third-floor yoga and barre studio, where the ceiling incorporates radiant heating technology and soft, ambient lighting from rectangular soffits. Connecting all levels is a floating staircase surrounded by a continuous concrete-panel sheath. Now that’s a physical feat.

RDC: Mitra Esfandiari; Jonathan Lopez; Joseph Tran; Constance Rosado; Haleh Johnson; Lana Smolskaya